Film
Mandy
- Director
- Panos Cosmatos
- Certificate
- 18
- Running Time
- 121 mins
Every so often, absurdly prolific Nicolas Cage makes a film that isn’t a steaming pile of shite. Last year, it was the terrific black comedy Mom & Dad. This year, it’s Beyond the Black Rainbow director Panos Cosmatos‘ weirdly compelling, batshit-crazy, psychotropic heavy metal horror flick, which makes full use of Cage’s box of OTT tricks as it descends into Heart of Darkness territory.
At its core, this is a vengeance flick with Cage as a lumberjack named Red who lives in a cabin in the woods with his wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). She attracts the attention of sinister cult leader Jeremiah (Linus Roache), whose followers capture and drug her. Naturally, this makes our hero real mad. Onto this straightforward plot, Cosmatos grafts a tone of dreamlike fantasy, producing an effect that one critic likened to “a King Crimson album played at half speed and twice normal volume; a bizarre and bloody outing with a strong heart beneath the surface”. In this, he’s assisted by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s final score, with Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) contributing massive guitar chords amid the synths.
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